Month: August 2012

Traditional legal training, from the first LSAT prep class to the final bar exam question, heavily emphasizes one’s ability to intellectually discern differences and analyze those differences in a most logical and detached fashion. Through immersion in this process over several years, one comes to almost exclusively engage intellectual faculties in the practice of law. We become especially attuned to differences among situations and, if one is not careful, among people.

This intellectual orientation, while honing one’s analytical acumen, can often lead to a spiritual void in which we come to completely overlook the commonality and connection that we all share. In losing this sense of connectedness, we can easily lose the ability to connect with clients in a meaningful way. Opportunities are lost to make a real difference in client’s lives.

Holistic practice has at its core a primary emphasis on the connection that we all share to simple present-moment being. In developing a practice of mindful lawyering, attorneys can become far better able to identify and address core client issues in a way that can help the client move forward more successfully in his or her life long after the resolution of legal issues.

In spiritually-engaged mindful lawyering, one’s intellectual and analytical faculties are somewhat relegated to the function of “tools” to be deployed once the unique life situation of the individual client has come to be understood. Through more mindful lawyering, attorneys can come to play an important role in the social transformation that they may have directed their course to law as a profession in the first instance.